


so we beat on, boats against the current

by serenfire



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: #GiveCredenceAHug2K16, Character Study, History of abuse, M/M, Pre-Slash, Spoilers, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-27
Updated: 2016-11-27
Packaged: 2018-09-02 15:06:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8672095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/serenfire/pseuds/serenfire
Summary: Credence escapes the battle in the rain, and by the time he boards the same ship as Newt, he can't quite remember what happened.





	

**Author's Note:**

> guess who wants credence to be happy and with newt. me

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter — to-morrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning —

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

— F. Scott Fitzgerald, _The Great Gatsby_

* * *

“Credence?” The voice startles him out of his reverie, eyes glassy and stomach knotted in nausea from watching the waves slap against the side of the ship, against the name painted in stark red letters, embodying the deep unrelentless ocean that might even be more dangerous than all the witches in the world.

Credence uncurls himself from the fetal position. He looks up right into the warm eyes of someone he swears he remembers from yesterday, even though he remembers absolutely nothing of the last week.

“Who are you?” he rasps. His throat is sore; the only water he’s seen in the past few days is the salt-encrusted ocean waves rocking and threatening to sink the ship, and he’s been engaged in--other activities--that he is breaths away from his body drying like one of the prunes he sees sold by the wizened old lady a block away from the Salemer house. When he was younger, when he was an actual child and not tall enough to pass as someone in charge of his own destiny, she would give him prunes, sneak them into his clammy, bloody hands, and Credence would savor them, the sweet juices that came from that orange sphere, the way sometimes they were bitter and the sweet bit would be hidden underneath layers of unripeness.

The man bends down to sit next to Credence against the side of the wooden ship one bad break away from being nothing but flotsam in the relentless waves. In his hands he clutches a case tightly, and Credence remembers this case--not that it had the twine strung over it in his memories that fold like gambling cards he notices flashes of every time he passes out leaflets in the speakeasies--but he can’t place the man next to it.

“I’m--I tried to get them to stop,” the man says, like he’s sorry, like he’s confessing to pay due penance, “I tried. Really, I did. And I’m so glad there was no permanent damage done, I’m sorry that--that bloody Grindelwald didn’t ensnare you.”

Credence blinks. “What are you talking about?”

The man nods. He’s as tall as Credence, something that Credence doesn’t experience in the slums of the City, outside the late-night clubs, filled with sprawling glamor, illegality oozing out of the very pores of the wall, the thrum of the drums and the jazz echoing the blatant disregard of rules. There are not many not versed in this all-encompassing wealth that stand up to his stature.

Except Mr. Graves--

“Oh,” the man says, waving his hand like--like he’s carrying a wand, and Credence repeats to himself that he’s escaped from New Salem, he’s free of Mother’s ranting and the infernal leaflets and the belt, oh, he’s free of the belt, and Credence will not project his eternal suffering onto this stranger who’s not a stranger. “Well, I wouldn’t expect you to know our history, being a no-maj--I guess you’re not quite a no-maj either, then; anyways, plenty of time to get you up to speed.”

Credence just nods and looks at the sky. Hours away from the coast of these United States, the sky is clear and sunny and it’s perfect weather, nothing like the torrent of rain last night--

The rain. There was rain. There was something else with it, on the tip of his tongue, an invisible barrier constructed around a subway station that Credence can’t visualize, wizards in dark coats and ashen faces directing the barrier with their wands, nothing like the hideous caricatures in Mother’s pamphlets, the red fire of the inferno almost lifelike on the pages.

The man puts his hand on Credence’s shoulder, and Credence remembers Mr. Graves, the only person he’s met taller than him, stern and slick and confident and--and there was some reason he talked to Credence, touched Credence, offered more that simple touches--

Some reason.

Credence can’t force himself to respond to the man’s rapid stream of words lilting off his tongue like they were gilded in the riches he’s only seen glimpses of in newspapers--in newspapers with moving pictures--

“What is it?” the man asks, peering close to Credence’s soul like he is identifying the source of the illness within Credence from looking at his face. But Credence’s face has never said anything useful about him, Credence himself was never useful, that’s why Mr. Graves didn’t show up at their appointed time, because Credence had failed--

“Mr. Graves,” Credence says suddenly. The man’s hand is still on his shoulder, warm and inviting and just there, not moving, not wanting anything from him. For more of that touch, Credence would give anything. For more of that touch, Credence has given everything, to Mr. Graves, to the only other person who deigned to speak to Credence like his own person--

But why?

There’s a ragged hole in Credence’s memory, the flashes of insight and the chunks of time that he can recall, words and phrases, a twist of an eyebrow here, a hand curling behind his neck and drawing him close for something more than healing, something more important than anything Credence has experienced before--

But no meaning.

“Yes,” the man says. “He’s--well, his real name is Gellert Grindelwald, MACUSA’s taken him in, you’re safe now. Don’t worry, Credence. He won’t hurt you again.”

“He didn’t hurt me,” Credence says with stunning clarity. This, he knows. Mr. Graves never wanted him, always wanted something just out of his reach, and Credence knew--Credence knows--that if he wasn’t positioned just as he was, they would have never met, and there would be no reason for Mr. Graves to continue to run his hands up Credence’s scars and give rest to his wounds, his aching soul. “But he didn’t show up for our meeting, he wasn’t there--why doesn’t he want me?”

The man draws Credence in for a hug, tucking Credence’s head under his chin. The similarity is frightening, and for a second Credence remembers the phantom pain from a light blast so much brighter than any bulb he sees swinging from a street lamp, hurting him down to his teeth rattling, Mr. Graves standing and screaming against a congregation of suits, a dark woman in a headscarf at the front, who was so effortlessly in control that Mr. Graves was--he was scared. And Credence didn’t see the scene like he was standing just behind Mr. Graves, cowering in obedience, but it’s as if Credence was a cloud, bodiless, the capabilities of sight everywhere. He is behind the woman pointing a smooth wand at Graves, next to Graves as he uses his wand simultaneously with his free hand, the light refracting from his limbs and smoldering the wall.

Credence remembers the moment, remembers the wands being pointed at him as he was a collected mass, until he burst like a balloon at the World’s Fair and floated, screaming, into the sky, until he broke down sobbing in an alley corner, the sign posts around him unfamiliar, the rain pouring in a torrent on his face, his hands unable to stop shaking. Phantom shards of glass and sticks of metal pierce his skin, but Credence remembers the feeling of going through them, feeling nothing but the satisfaction of power.

“Don’t think that,” the man says, and Credence doesn’t know to what extent he voiced his thoughts, if the man could understand him with his stutter and how his mind seizes, unable to process or think or even understand. “Percival Graves was not who you think he was.”

“But he helped me,” Credence says. “I don’t remember how--I don’t remember, but I know he was a witch. Does that make me as much a freak as he?”

He pulls away from the man with the case, who was present at Graves’ last stand, but Credence only notices the familiarity of the lilt, the words washing over him like a hot bath, the sense of peace and stillness in his very corporeal bones.

The man’s face is frozen in pity, in sadness, in the expression of the beginning of understanding that Credence has trusted a liar, has trusted an evildoer, has trusted a freak of nature, and his fate will be just as worse in the life after this.

“No,” the man says, and he pulls something out of his coat pocket, handing it to Credence’s shaking hands. Through the large blurs in Credence’s sight he can see the soft silk fabric, the initials stitched into a corner: N.S. It’s a handkerchief, because he’s crying. Credence lifts the fabric to his face and lets his tears soak up in the silk. The handkerchief smells like hot cocoa and a wet animal, and Credence doesn’t know what to make of that. “Nothing you have done, or that has been done to you, makes you a--a freak. Credence, were you out in the rain last night?”

Credence just nods wordlessly, unable to make a sound while drying his eyes. The equivalent of the oceans rocking the ship seem to be pouring forth from his soul. “I had nowhere else to go,” he finally whispers. “Mother’s dead, the house is destroyed. I--I don’t know how I knew that, but I was certain of it.”

“You’re not wrong,” the man says, and touches Credence’s cheek, right where a missed tear is threatening to drop into his lap. Credence leans into the touch, the feeling of warm smooth skin against his own roughshod, damp face. “Can you remember anything that happened to you yesterday?”

Credence tells him of waiting for Mr. Graves, of obeying Mother, of watching out for Modesty and--and chasing her down to her previous home, where the ghosts of her dead parents are always present, even though the house now belongs to another family of seven. And then the subway, and then the rain, and the unshakeable conviction that he has to leave.

“Well,” the man says, and his eyes are watering, but he doesn’t ask for the handkerchief back, just wipes the back of his sleeves and works through it. “We can start over, then.” He sticks out a hand for Credence to shake. “My name is Newt Scamander.”

Credence takes the hand, and as Mr. Scamander makes no move to shake, he initiates it, trying to move up and down at a rational manner as his hand still shivers uncontrollably.

“Credence Barebone,” he smiles.

Mr. Scamander says, “Credence, I’m going to find a way to get your memories back.”

*

The ship rocks all around him, and Credence’s throat is raw from vomiting the remaining gruel in his stomach, sagging in the cot Mr. Scamander--Newt, he had asked to be called Newt--gave up so he could rest.

Every time he blearily looks up as his stomach threatens to burst again, Newt is sitting against the wall of the cabin, resting his elbows on his case, a small green creature on his shoulder. Newt looks at him with a face that can only be described as concern every time Credence moves to throw up into the bucket next to his swinging cot.

Every time, without fail, Newt says, “I can fix that, you know.”

Every time, Credence holds out his hand, still shaking, still covered in scars that bear the price of his life, and says, “Please, no.”

Sometimes he whispers it. Sometimes he crows it, loud and scathing against his vocal cords, choking until the words come out in a mantra: please, no. No more magic, no more wands that haunt his living nightmares. The truth is being revealed to him in the harrowing black of his dreams, visions that make less sense than Newt’s halted explanations.

Newt explains to him, as Credence lies shivering in his fever, his head about to explode and the familiar feel of pulsing behind his teeth, an omen of the dark force within him, is present again. Newt says things like, “You’re the only Obscurial that survived beyond childhood. Percival Graves was only an illusion of a man; he was a monster, underneath.”

At that, Credence protests. He always protests that point. “Everyone wants something,” he rasps, even when he can’t bring himself to deny Newt the healing the witch so dearly wants to bestow upon him. He always has the breath for this, even when his breath is used for everything else. “And I--I wanted him as much as he wanted me.”

Newt holds Credence’s hand, the phantom pain of the belt buckle flaring back to life as Credence remembers Mr. Graves running his own calloused hands over it, healing him, but even the thought of Newt doing the same thing as the man who--the man who--

But he agreed to everything Mr. Graves did. Credence knowingly made the choice, every time, to obey, to submit, to endure whatever was expected of him, to promises--empty or meaningful--that he had a purpose, that he was special, that Mr. Graves would teach him what he wanted to know.

Magic.

The answer comes to him when the moon wanes in the sky and the first rays of light reach out tenderly over the ocean. The light casts deep shadows on Newt’s haggard form, sleeping in a trance of the sleepless, and Credence’s own mess of his cot and clothes. He feels worse than he did when the moon appeared, and exhausted besides. He breathes out his nose, his tongue too listless in his throat to make any sort of sound. The other passengers crowded below deck in their cots are all asleep, the cots slowly rocking back and forth with a rhythmic squeaking, and Credence is the only one shivering.

He knows, like lightning that streaks across the sky, sudden and brilliant and bright, that he wanted Mr. Graves to teach him magic. More than he wanted to leave Mother and even leave Modesty, he wanted to have the weird power Mr. Graves possessed, the flick of his wrist that curled his form up into the air and made the alleyways ever the worse for his absence. He wanted the ability to run a hand over someone’s--his own, Modesty’s, the beggars in the alleys that he waits for Mr. Graves in--and heal their wounds, to soothe their blood and to blossom warmth into their souls. Every time Mr. Graves touched him, more warmth touched Credence’s soul.

But now, looking at the wand tucked behind Newt’s ear, that the green creature--Bowtruckle, according to Newt--sleeps on, he doesn’t want a part of that world. The last time he saw wands, their cruel curves were pointed at him, light arcing out of their yawned caverns of possibility and with sneers on their faces, hate in their heart that’s palpable to the mass that is Credence, they press on with the intent to kill him.

But yet, here he is. Credence knows there are scars on his chest and thighs from the assault, even when he reformed into his body, he kept the scars of his attack. He knows that if he reached down and touched above his knees, scar tissue would flake off and he would relive the pain of the quantums piercing him, so he doesn’t. Credence balls his hands into fists and imagines the pain, imagines the scarring that he will see in the ship outhouse when it’s noonday and he has to take off his trousers, that he will see the remnants of the event proving he is evil.

Newt doesn’t think he’s evil.

Credence scowls, suddenly angry, suddenly wrathful and intent on vengeance. Mr. Graves isn’t dead--at least, his soul isn’t. His face vanished after the witches held him down with their spells, and the stranger wearing his mannerisms took over the same body that gently held him for minutes at a time, with a sneer and a curse to the world. Mr. Graves should be dead.

Credence should make it so.

Before he knows it, he is on the deck of the ship, bracing his clattering hands on the railing and looking down into the ocean deep beneath him. The rolling waves are soothing this early in the morning, the sky still pink overhead, interrupted often by a bird or seagull flying from land to nest somewhere, and Credence feels light all at once, from his aching, damp toes to his throbbing head, like he could close his eyes and float away into the sky. It would be so easy. He would finally be free.

“Credence,” a voice says behind him.

Credence turns around, but his legs aren’t strong enough to support him without the railing, and he buckles. Newt rushes towards him, catching him before he can injure himself. But Credence winces--Newt’s hands are around his biceps, within each are the most grievous pain that Credence doesn’t have the courage to examine.

But Newt does. He looks at Credence as the flesh under his hand draws forth blood, and says in a sharp whisper, “Can I?”

Mr. Graves had never asked for permission, just assumed that Credence would follow the letter of the agreement they made.

Credence swallows. “Yes.” It would be better to get it over with, anyways--as if Newton Scamander was a better person than the people he claims are his enemies. As if he wants anything purer than Mr. Graves, or he is somehow more innocent than the second face appearing on the man Credence trusted--

But Newt just unbuttons Credence’s shirt and gently eases his shirt off of the injured arms, and once Credence sees his own blood, he looks away. Instead, he looks at Newt’s warm eyes, and how he reacts visibly to whatever the gashes must look like.

“These could only be from spells,” Newt murmurs. “But you weren’t in your body during the fight, it was just--”

“My soul,” Credence finishes for him, and is proven correct by how Newt’s face shutters closed. “I know I was fated to die. I know that I wasn’t supposed to--to come back to this, to appear here, but I am. And I just want everything to go away.”

“Is that why you were out here? To go away?” Newt asks firmly.

“The sky is so beautiful,” Credence says, miserable now. The open wounds don’t bother him; he’s had worse, but the implications that wounds made to his soul will never heal do. The pain in his legs and stomach and arms will never go away. “I just wanted to fly away.”

“And you probably could,” Newt frowns to himself. “Because you might still be back in your body, but your soul is acting out on its own. It years to leave and disperse and destroy, like it was warped to do.”

“How do I fix it?” Credence asks, his face just inches from Newt.

Newt looks at him. “I know you don’t like magic,” he begins, “but the reason you split was because you were conditioned to hate this part of yourself. And magic might manifest as--as evil as Percival Graves, but it also is as innocent as this.”

He holds out his hand, and it takes Credence a second to recognize what’s on his flat palm. The green leafy creature, the Bowtruckle, is standing there, and waving to him with his small leafy hand.

“His name is Pickett,” Newt says softly, his every breath a caress to Credence’s soul. “He rather likes you.”

Credence extends his hand to the magical creature. “Is this what I do to make the pain stop?” he says. “I become magic again?”

“Don’t worry,” Newt says, squeezing his shoulder as Pickett climbs happily onto Credence’s shaking hand. “It will come naturally to you. That’s what it was meant to do.”

Credence nods as Pickett climbs up his arms, barely leaving an indent in his creased clothes, settling on his shoulder. “I trust you,” he tells Newt. It’s the barest realization of his soul Credence has ever voiced.

Newt’s eyes are teary, but his grin is shining and bright. He says, “I’m glad you do, Credence. I trust you, too.”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> hmu at my [tumblr](http://www.bi-dianaprince.tumblr.com)!


End file.
